We have gone through three stages of evolution on the tech tree, and I think we are getting a little stuck. The 1.0 tech tree was a "repaint" of vanilla, substituting wikipedia names for different vanilla techs without making much underlying change. In 1.1 through 1.4 we have tweaked the tech tree, moving one or two things around based on playtest feedback. In 1.4.1 and 1.4.3 and keldath's latest tree from yesterday, we have done several more substantial "refoldings", moving things around a lot.

But fundamentally we are not getting a "good" tech tree out of this. We are just removing some of the least logical things at each revision.

I think we need to *design* a new tech tree from scratch. This is a big project, and it cannot be conveniently done by a distributed team. Somebody needs to do it, write a proposal, and incorporate feedback. Once that is done it can be implemented in the xml.

The purpose of a tech tree, fundamentally, is to space out all the interesting items so you don't get them all at the beginning. The things that go into the tech tree are buildings, wonders, units, improvements and civics; some promotions. These things already have some "progressions"; for example, a small unit comes first, then a medium size one, then a large one. But there are many such progressions that need to be all interleaved.

I think the first step is to assume for the moment, we will freeze the buildings and units, and use the civics from Ahriman's adjacent thread. If *everything* is still being changed, then *nothing* can move along safely. Then we need to list out all the existing progressions, and decide approximately what tech tier (x position on the tech chooser screen) is appropriate. Then cluster some items which are related and at about the same position, into techs. Then create lines of techs.

I have never done a tech tree from scratch. Anybody else?

Perhaps we can consolidate what we have into a 1.5 release and fix some of the known bugs in this, without worrying about the tech tree. Then at least people can play 1.5 with some reasonable success. In parallel, we can design and tweak a new tech tree.

I will go back to the "incremental patch discussion" thread to discuss what we should fix for 1.5. Let's start discussing about a new tech tree here.

hi, good idea on this thread...:)

its a bit harsh do do it from scratch, but its doable.

i will be happy to do all the xml work myself.

but, all i need is a blue print, if someone will be willing to build this blue print with excel - just making a flow chart on it, and ill implement it into the xml. its the easiest way to build a tree from scratch.
and i think someone thats familiar with the dune concepts and time flow should do it, after making the first draft - it can be uploaded here, and everyone wil go over it, making fixes and then after we get to agreement - i will implement it to the xml.


further more, i think the tech tree is the first thing thats needs to be completed before moving to other things, cause eventually everything starts and ends with it.
so i believe we should all put our effort to finalize the tree, cause otherwise we will keep going on circles.

really hope you guys think like me...dont you guys want already to have your first game with dune mod v 1.5 ???? cammon people lets go forward!
:)

Ok, I will have a quick swing at a total redesign and try to get some feedback.

Using "1.4.4.1" or "1.4.5", let me take one hour or so and put together a list of all the existing units, buildings, improvements and civics. These objects will need to be placed into the tech tree. The spreadsheet will contain one line for each object, giving the name, category (unit, building, wonder, improvement) and existing x-position in tech tree.

EDIT: attached file.

Will incorporate these.
I'm also merging this tree with my civics and religion changes.
Will have this in maybe 40 mins. I have a ~78 tech tree, adding in requirements now.

wow you guys work fast huh?

78 techs ...mmm ok, i would be happier if it was 80-85 techs...but...im going with the flow.

i cant wait to see, its more then i wished for if your also putting in all the items on the techs.

i sure hope that theres enogh room between unit classes.

:)

Ok, whew! Longer than I expected.

See Excel workbook attached. Note that this tech-tree is designed to go with the civics and religion changes.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=330907
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=331036
These still need some more work too.

This tech-tree will need more unit tweaking and some more stuff at the top end maybe, but I think it looks MUCH more logical than the current one. Its pretty obvious what most techs represent from their name alone, and there are some reasonably logical progressions while still allowing some interesting strategic (and thematic) choices (I hope).

When reading the sheet:
Descriptions tab and Tree tab are the main things to look at.
Categories was a mental thing during my design process.

Final count is 92 techs. Probably a few could be cut (plas-steel as distinct from plas-steel armor), but not that many.

*edit*
Forum doesn't like Excel.

I was thinking "days" or "weeks" to get this done, not "hours". On paper, it looks great. Getting it into the xml will pose some challenge, and we may want to tweak it some after that. But I agree with the paper design.

Ahriman, do you want to add costs?

The first challenge in implementing it will be to lay out the exact grid, with x,y locations and making sure the arrows do not cross. Using AND-prereqs will be needed to prevent crossings, but should be minimized.

Keldath, do you want to try setting up the x,y grid, also maybe in excel? Or do you want somebody else to do that?

It will be necessary to enter the civics and religions at the same time, and also to modify all the prereqtechs in the units, builds, buildings files. So at least those five files should be considered "locked". It will also be hard to split those jobs among multiple people in parallel.

Keldath, do you want to take on this whole project? If you have some suggestions about a way to split it up, I can do a small piece, but combining the work at the end will be hard.

I have made some small bug fixes in several of those files, but I am happy to keep my changes aside until the tech tree is entered. I have listed a few current projects on the incremental patches thread, which I will continue on with.

It will definitely need tweaking, but it can be hard to do this without really seeing it in-game.

I can add beaker costs, I'll work roughly from the current build.

Since displayed beakers vary by difficultly level, I will work from the Chieftan difficult level, which seems to be closest to the beaker costs displayed from the main menu (at chieftain, desert insects is displayed as 97 beakers, at warlord its displayed as ~116 beakers, in the Dune-O-Pedia its displayed as 100 beakers, which is what I assume its real tech cost is that you want in the design document.

*edit*
Added attachment, new version including beaker costs and a few minor requirement tweaks

It is really hard to explain what we need to do when you are reluctant to view xml in your notepad. I am not sure what recalculation happens when the values get displayed in the tech chooser. In the xml, assets/xml/technologies/civ4techinfos.xml, you can see the iCost field for each tech. For example, Zensunni Teachings costs 100, Way of Believers costs 80 in the XML. So you could base your values on this.

Yeah, I can look at some xml in notepad, but I think thats the same as the values you get from viewing in the Dune-O-Pedia from the main menu.

Opening a game at warlord difficulty has way of believers at 78. This is what I based things off.

Costs edited in above, but they're very rough; I tried to have costs represent tech power and whether I wanted a particular thing to be available earlier or later, but I didn't do a thorough job of checking total costs to particular units.

hi guys,
superb work, its more then i wished for.

i will take this project on me, the whole thing.

ill start today,
guess it will take me two three days.

dont worry about the x's and Y's,
ill arrange the tree in a good way.

ill implement all the assignments of the items onto it.


ahriram thank you vry much,

anybody, if you have more suggestions then plz do,
i want us to lock the tree, or at least its core structure.

92 is a good number!

Great work, Ahriman.

If you want to take the plunge with XML, I would recommend installing Notepad++ and the XML plugin for it.

hey guys,
ive started working on ahrirams doc,

so far i renamed almost half of the techs, im working systematically,
its tons of work,

it will take me a few days, but it wil be exactly like the doc describes,

so i would appreciate if any of you can go over the excel file and try to visioulize the tree, and see whats need some tweakes,
cause it would be a killer to do this again.....

I think the tree makes sense to me, but I made it, so I am possibly too invested to see major flaws. I think it will need a close look from others, then bring up any issues and I can explain if they were deliberate design intentions (eg like the Golden Path religion being a very late-game high tier religion, but with its pre-requisites being a looong way back, so you can beeline for it earlier if you like; or how you can get things with either Mentat logic/mind training OR with genetic maniupation; either normal mentats, or twisted mentats; or how you can get solar power or wind power but don't have to get both) or just oversights.

so i would appreciate if any of you can go over the excel file and try to visioulize the tree, and see whats need some tweakes, cause it would be a killer to do this again.....

I agree this is painful, but it is very important to the mod. Short of performing the whole layout myself and looking at it, I do not think I will have any more feedback. The progression of units seems fine, the number and type of new things available for each tech seems fine. I am sure that the "tech lines" aspect will be more clear once the layout is done, but it seems Ahriman has put thought into that as well.

I have a little time available; would it help if I entered the new design for civics? I don't want to make things more complicated to merge. Let me know if you want me to enter that part. I can either send you the one changed file, or keep it for my merge of 1.4.7 after you release 1.4.6.

davidlallen,

i think i can take care of the xml aspect,
you guys can fill in the tree in the excel sheet and send me the updates, for start im gonna finish the tree itself then ill start assigning stuff according to the sheet.

ahriram,
there some techs that leads to nothing, i think all tech should lead towards something, first ill work out what you designs after that - ill write what i offer to link those techs.

you guys can fill in the tree in the excel sheet and send me the updates, for start im gonna finish the tree itself then ill start assigning stuff according to the sheet.

I do not think either of us is planning on making updates to the excel sheet. Is there information missing which you need?

there some techs that leads to nothing, i think all tech should lead towards something, first ill work out what you designs after that - ill write what i offer to link those techs.

All tech trees contain techs that don't lead anywhere. This includes vanilla, all mods I have played, and existing DW. I don't see any problem with this.

All tech trees contain techs that don't lead anywhere. This includes vanilla, all mods I have played, and existing DW. I don't see any problem with this.

i see, well, personally i Rather have all techs as preqeq to something, but,
im not gonna change the sheet by ahriman, all i wanna do is finish this thing and go on forward to 1.5 :)

if ill need anything ill say, meanwhile im building the tree, got to tier 7 so far.

There are many techs that don't lead anywhere, but this was deliberate design.

Some of the techs just aren't things that would be learned by particular factions; for example, you shouldn't have to research the Golden Path tech if you don't want to, and many factions aren't going to learn about the Water of Life, or genetic manipulation, Atreides or Fremen shouldn't be forced to learn the Interment Camps tech. You shouldn't have to research religious techs if you don't want their stuff. And so on.

I *think* most of the techs that you can avoid either:
a) have nice benefits themselves or
b) are an OR requirement for another tech.

I'd be ok with some of these to pepper them with more "first to reserach gets X" to reward the first guy, and then others can skip it.

There will probably have to be some tweaking, but mostly it looks ok. Are there any particualar techs you're concerned about?

ok thanks ahriman, its clear now.

hey guys,

half og the tech tree structure is done,
i need some help from you,

if you can i need you to write me the flavours of each tech on the sheet, so id know what to assign to each tech - gold, military and etc.

thank!

Hmmm, I just did some more tech quotes and pedia text and submitted them. I think I will hold off doing anything else for now. Hope you guys can use what I did. I had fun writing the quotes anyway.

Cheers,
Sword

If you want to work on quotes, take a look at the tree in the Excel files in this thread.

hey guys, ive finished around a bit more then half of the tree, theres much work to do with this, so it will take a while longer.

Thanks for the update! Keep up the good work, we are all praying for you.

hehe thanks buddy.

hey guys,
ive finished the tech tree...after over 20 hours of sweat...


its just the first draft,

all i did is repositioning and renaming the tech descriptions,
i still have to:
-do the costs
-do the flavours
-do the tags for each tech

after this:
-start re assigning every item in the mod according to the excel sheet.


note:
i had to change some of the tech preqeq that ahriram did,
the changes ive made i made cause i had no choise cuase there was no room to use the original preqeq by ahriram here are my changes:

Internment camps - Social mobility instead of Imperialism

Arrakis transformation - sand farms instead of way of liet

Suk school - only Mind training instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation


Mentat logic - only Genetic manipulation instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation

Research labs - and instd of or in this - Mind training OR Genetic manipulation

Kwizatz Haderach - preqeq - Holtzmann generators + No-fields + The Golden Path
+ Atomics

its 6 changes that i had to do, in order to keep an aesthetic tree arrows.


i attach the tech file, if anyone wishes to help me and do either the the flavours, coss, or tags, that will be nice, but if not , dont worry about it.

also attacked a picture.

hope to here your thought,

i pray , i beg, i hope i sing, i aspire, i desire, i dont know what else, that this will be our finalized tech tree for the next at least 3 official versions of dune wars.

your freindly modder, keldath.

Looks good so far! Do you have updated building and unitinfo files yet? If not, I can update the tags in those maybe this evening. Do you have an updated civics file yet, with Ahriman's proposed new civics? If not, somebody can work on that also.

hey david,

no i havent done anything but this,

as i said, it took me over 20 hours to do it, i had to put much thought on the x's and Y's.

anything you want to do is great,
but be sure to tell me what, so we wont do the same work...

before the items - if youll look at the tree xml - youll see that the tags arent the same as the description - you can have tech_exploration but in the description it will sat - desert warfare,
so this needs to be changed before assigning any item....

Obviously I appreciate the massive amount of work this takes, and some design intentions may have to give way. But a few comments:

Internment camps - Social mobility instead of Imperialism

These are opposites. The social mobility tech is a "benevolent" government civic, while Imperialism is neutral and Internment Camps are "Malevolent". It would be very unfortunate to have this requirement, since they're thematically so opposite.

Maybe Internment camps could require Feudalism AND Imperialism? So have the arrow come from Feudalism, and have Imperialism as an extra requirement?

Arrakis transformation - sand farms instead of way of liet
This sounds fine, it looks like Way of Liet is an implicit requirement since that is required for water discipline?

Suk school - only Mind training instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation

Mentat logic - only Genetic manipulation instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation

Research labs - and instd of or in this - Mind training OR Genetic manipulation

These are also somewhat unfortunate.
The intention was that mind training and genetic manipulation be two different paths that you could follow to get things like Mentats or doctors. The Bene Gesserit and most factions would canonically favor mind training, but the Bene Tl would use genetic manipulation instead, to grow their twisted mentats rather than training new ones.

The Suk school change is fine, its not that big a deal.
But it looks like you *could* get the Mind training OR Genetic manipulation for Mentats if you shifted the genetic manipulation box up, to be horizontal with desert industry, moved the line from space guild to space ports up above this box, and then drew a line from mind training to mentat logic (and made this OR).
Then we could make Research Labs require Suk School OR Mentat logic, so it would still be possible to get to research labs *without* mind training by following the genetic manipulation path, or to get to reserach labs without mind training by following the mind training->suk school path.

Kindjal Blades should have an AND requirement with Personal shields; this was my omission for which I apologize. Multiple levels of melee should be prereqs.
Low energy vehicle should similarly be an AND requirement for Plas-steel armor; again my fault.
Improved Suspensors should be an AND requirement for Cooling systems - my fault.

And finally for aesthetics, we could consider cutting the tiers down by 2, condensing 18 into 17 and 20 into 19, the top of the tree is very very sparse.

Otherwise, this looks excellent.

We may have to make further minor changes due to playtesting, but otherwise I hope this is solid.

I'm not sure this will help, but I cleaned up the file a little bit. For each tech, I took the description, converted it to uppercase, and replaced the type, civilopedia, strategy and quote fields. This is similar to the "great renaming" I did. It does not change what is displayed on the screen at all, but it will make updating the other files easier. The original had:

<Type>TECH_ZENSUNNI_TEACHINGS</Type>
<Description>Mysticism</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_TECH_ZENSUNNI_TEACHINGS_PEDIA</Civilopedia>

The new has:

<Type>TECH_MYSTICISM</Type>
<Description>Mysticism</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_TECH_MYSTICISM_PEDIA</Civilopedia>

I did not try to bring it up because none of the other files are updated with these names. But I think this will make going forward easier.

I will try to put this into the unitinfos file.

Ahriman, hi,

thanks for the feedback,

ill see what i can do.

the problem is, that you made mind training to be a required tech for too many techs, and i couldnt implement it, you can clearly see that ihad to place each tech after mid training carefully.

i also thought about the sparse ending, i will make it denser, not problem.

if you feel that some techs needs to be removed just say the word.

i will implement your suggestions the as best as i can.


david,
thanks a lot buddy.

the problem is, that you made mind training to be a required tech for too many techs, and i couldnt implement it, you can clearly see that ihad to place each tech after mid training carefully.

Another alternative that might help if mind training is needed for too many things; take mind training as an AND requirement away from Riding the Worm, and make Riding the Worm require Water of Life instead of Sand Worms AND Mind training.

It also look like you have Water of Life requiring Riding the Worm; it was supposed to be the opposite.
The Water of Life tech is supposed to require Sand worms and be required for Space Guild, so it is placed strangely.

I think you should move sand worms left (so that it lies under academies) and put Water of Life where sandworms are now.

I have updated my local area by putting the tech changes into unitinfos. Next I will work on buildinginfos. Then I will try "civcheck" to see what else needs to be changed. My local area already has a ton of changes related to new civ abilities and other fixes. So, what we had called 1.4.6 and 1.4.7 may arrive together.

Keldath, as you make changes based on Ahriman's feedback and other changes, please update the tech file I gave in my previous post. That way, your updated tech file and my other files will remain consistent.

I have merged the tech tree changes into all the other files, except religion and civics. For religion I have kept the original religions, just updated the names of the techs to something that seemed appropriate. We can add the "religion rewrite" separately. For civics I am about to start the "civics rewrite" which Ahriman designed.

There are a huge number of changes now and it is impossible to make progress in parallel; any further changes will introduce merge problems. Once I get the civics done, I am strongly tempted to release a 1.4.6 update with everything. It may be difficult to test all the new things separately, but at least further tuning can go onto a consistent view of the files.

Here are some things which I have learned from this project so far.

1. In terms of hours spent, assigning the x,y coordinates is a huge task. This could be considered part of the design, not the xml implementation. As we have seen with some of the arrow densities, this can push changes back onto the design as well.

2. Designing the flavors would also have been helpful. This is not directly visible outside the xml files. There are 5-6 different flavor values, such as culture, production, military. Each tech may have a weight for each of the flavors; for example, gunpowder may have a weight of 10 for the military flavor. Each leaderhead is given an "interest" in each of the flavors. This helps a military leader to research military techs first. We now have a random collection of flavors, unless keldath has been very careful to update them.

3. Having a sheet of all the existing objects to populate into the tree is very helpful. But it should have *all* the objects. I left out the "process" tasks like "Can Build Research", and also the projects (the space race victories). I have randomly stuck the process tasks and projects into some techs which made vague sense to me. There are a bunch of individual special abilities, like "enables gold trading", which we did not consider either. It is hard to make a list of all of these, but I am sure many are missing.

==> I had suggested before that we have too many victory conditions, and the space race condition does not make too much sense to me. Should we keep it? If so, could somebody please pick which techs would make sense for the various objects?

This was always going to be a tough process, with some tweaking and tidyup necessary afterwards. I don't have a problem with releasing a version that still needs further refinement - it's impossible to get something this complex perfect first time.

I say scrap space race too - it makes no sense in this mod.

I say scrap space race too - it makes no sense in this mod.You might be able to change it into a "no-ship race", as the no-field techs are at the end of the tree anyway, but only if we're hurting for a additional victory condition.

Cheers, LT.

First, just noticed; the Satellites tech from the design doc appears to be missing?

I think the space-race victory should be cut for now, and re-examined if we think its needed. Its basically superseded by the terraforming victory anyway.

I would put:
Can build research at Education
Can build culture at Culture of Dune (should we rename this, it now sounds lame in retrospect - Cultural Achievements maybe?)
Can build Gold at Solaris economy.
Open borders at Desert Trade.
Can trade techs at Education.
Can trade gold at offworld trade.
Defensive pacts at Landsraad.
Permanent Alliances at Vendettas.
World map revealed at Satellites tech.

Any others missing?

I can add flavor values if you explain a bit more how they work.
What are the flavors? Do the values all add up to 10 for each, tech? So a pure military is 10 military 0 others, a military-industrial might be 5 military/5 industry/5 others, etc?

I think the space-race victory should be cut for now, and re-examined if we think its needed. Its basically superseded by the terraforming victory anyway.

I took it out in 1.1.x something and keldath put it back, so I will let him discuss.

I can add flavor values if you explain a bit more how they work.
What are the flavors? Do the values all add up to 10 for each, tech? So a pure military is 10 military 0 others, a military-industrial might be 5 military/5 industry/5 others, etc?


You can see more about this in the civ wiki at this link (http://modiki.civfanatics.com/index.php/Civ4TechInfos), including an example. I don't think this shows up anywhere in the civilopedia or the game interface, so the only way to see more might be to look in the xml. It may be impossible for you to "level up" any further without researching the "Read XML" technology. It's just plain text.

hey guys,

ive been a bit busy,

i see you guys did a lot of work till now,
great!

i dont mind scraping the space race vic for now, we have enough vic's.

though the no ship sounds kinda cool.

as deliverator says, its a process, eventually we will find all the missing stuff.

i will do some more work on the weekend, from the point david will get to.

Maybe Internment camps could require Feudalism AND Imperialism? So have the arrow come from Feudalism, and have Imperialism as an extra requirement?

I changed Internment Camps to require Feudalism. But Imperialism is up two levels, and in a big crowd. I did not put an AND requirement from Imperialism back down to Camps.

But it looks like you *could* get the Mind training OR Genetic manipulation for Mentats if you shifted the genetic manipulation box up, to be horizontal with desert industry, moved the line from space guild to space ports up above this box, and then drew a line from mind training to mentat logic (and made this OR).

Then we could make Research Labs require Suk School OR Mentat logic, so it would still be possible to get to research labs *without* mind training by following the genetic manipulation path, or to get to reserach labs without mind training by following the mind training->suk school path.

I guess the key point is to have Mentats come from either Mind Training or Genetic Manipulation. This part of the tree is also very dense. We could make room by placing Riding The Worm, Arrakis Transformation, Water Of Life and Golden Path all on a single line in that order. I tried changing Space Guild to require Desert Industry, or Landsraad, but those did not quite free up enough room. What do you think?

Kindjal Blades should have an AND requirement with Personal shields ... Low energy vehicle should similarly be an AND requirement for Plas-steel armor ... Improved Suspensors should be an AND requirement for Cooling systems ... we could consider cutting the tiers down by 2, condensing 18 into 17 and 20 into 19, the top of the tree is very very sparse.

Done.

Satellites tech from the design doc appears to be missing?

No, just accidentally had the same x,y as Plasteel Armor.

I changed Internment Camps to require Feudalism. But Imperialism is up two levels, and in a big crowd. I did not put an AND requirement from Imperialism back down to Camps.

Internment camps was intended to be in a later tier.
Why not make it require Law of Arrakis? And then move it so it is to the right of Maula pistols and Law of Arrakis? That gives it a higher requirement, and still a logical one, and moves it to an empty space.


We could make room by placing Riding The Worm, Arrakis Transformation, Water Of Life and Golden Path all on a single line in that order

This seems possible, but it was intended that Arrakis transformation be an optional tech, that you don't need to research unless you want to follow the terraforming path. Spicers don't *want* to transform Arrakis.
[*edit* though currently the tech gives Aquabores, so it isn't really optional]

Would it help if we move sand worms left so it was under Academies, pushed Space guild up so it was just under Landsraad, and then we could move mind training down and genetic manipulation left and up, so that genetic manipulation and mind training were vertically adjacent?
And then we could pull mentat logic left too, to make an easier line from genetic manipulation to artificial spice.

hey,

david,

you haven't made the tech flavors right?

No, I have not done anything with tech flavors. I have fixed a couple of python issues and recently the civics issues. Next I will do some more on the offworld resources (which touches python, bonuses and buildings), and then maybe improvements.

If you touch the techs file, please also do verify the hammer costs.